

Some display comprehensive information, some show limited amounts of data to narrow its scope. There a few different types of threat maps. Threat maps provide that visual connection that turns information into intelligence. Not only are they fun to look at, to be completely human and honest, but threat maps can be valuable to help your security team make connections and predictions on future attacks where your company may fall into the mix. However, you can use a threat map as an addition to your threat intelligence sources as it provides valuable insight into your organization's threat posture. Threat actors tend to forge their real locations, meaning that these are often displayed incorrectly on attack maps and their source may be incorrect.Īs a result, some cybersecurity professionals question the real value of threat maps.

Also, threat maps show anonymized data, without any insights into the identity of the attackers or the victims. Many of these maps may claim that they show data in real-time, but in reality, most show a playback of records of previous attacks. Cyber Threat Map Limitationsīut we’ll be upfront about the faults of threat maps. In addition to visualizing the attacks, cyber threat maps also provide a limited amount of context including the source and target countries, attack types, and historical and (near) real-time data about threats. Threat maps illustrate the millions of cyber threats happening every day. With cyber attacks happening around the world and across the cyber connected world, threat intelligence, specifically threat maps, are a powerful way to make threats and attackers concrete. (Image courtesy of Kaspersky Lab.Cyber threats can be quite elusive and intangible: who are the people behind cyber attacks and where are they targeting their attacks? Denning examine why the protection of cyber systems is such a complicated, messy problem, compared with other large-scale engineering endeavors. In “Cybersecurity Is Harder than Building Bridges,” Peter J. Lines follow the threat from its point of discovery to other places on the globe that are being attacked by the same threat. Germany is sixth and France is seventh.) Colors in the attacks indicate how the threat was discovered-through a user’s regular screening (red ), or in a sweep brought on by a suspicious email attachment (blue ), for example. (The order changes, but Russia is often first, followed by the United States. This image, showing recent attacks over the span of seconds, centers on Europe and Asia, which contain countries often on the top-10 attacked list. Security software company Kaspersky Labs has created a real-time global map of cyberthreats that its security network is subjected to (see ).

At any given moment, millions of computing systems connected to the Internet are fending off attacks.
